Each episode is 43 minutes without commercial interruption…watching 2 episodes a night between now and 2/2 will get through Seasons 1-5 in time for the final season premiere.  If someone knows of an app that will make this happen in my hdtv (while preempting network programming), send me an email.  ‘Til then…Ladies and gents, start your downloads!

Extra Credit: At the Lost website,  check out the weird Dharma Mysteries in the video section.

Rule of thumb for when Ben Linus turns up: if you can get out of there and go fix the plane, you should go fix the plane.  Good thinking, Frank, mainly because the only number higher than Ben’s IQ is his body count.  He is, as Basher would say, a proper villain – just ask those guys with the boat…Supernatural forces at work or not…do we really believe he’s going to play second banana from here on out?  Yah right bub!

Hugo as the World’s Biggest Flash Addict. The funniest moment of Season 5, so far.  When did everybody on ‘LOST’ start dosing?

Check your local listings because ABC will do it to you every time.  Looking for the pop-up version of LOST I absent mindedly tuned out to the end of a barely respirating episode of the once defunct “Scrubs” and an innocuously banal shit-com called Better Off Ted, which is unfortunately nothing like Better Off Dead. I’m sure I’m the millionth blogger to blog that.  Blogtastic.  Anyway, the cast is great, the art direction dystopian and cool, and the writing is terrible.  Salt doesn’t help.  Sorry Portia!

Enough with the preamble.  LOST wuz a dud with an end we just had to watch (yecch) before the penultimate installment of Life On Mars.  I watched so many NewsCenter 5 promos that I figured out why puppy mill owners are always so obese.  Selling sick puppies to local pet stores is a smokescreen for what these fat bastiches do to the good ones – they eat them.

LOST ON MARS catchphrase: go drinkulate. as in…..I’d go drinkulate with Harvey anyplace anytime anywhere, you name it.

Why you may ask, no new LOST? More time to get over our time travel sickness.  I skipped last night’s rerun but tuned in for the recently canceled Life On Mars.  FYI, if there is an Emmy for lighting design, look no further.

In any other time slot this show would’ve been alright, but LOST is a tough act to follow.  In light of the cancellation, LOM has turned into a really long movie with big name actors, GTA mission-like episodes.  Much better than the sprawling, confused narrative that never seemed to be going anywhere.

Most interesting is the budding, yet floundering relationship between Mol and our hero, who’ll have to struggle with the decision to go back to his own time without the woman he’s sprouted a boner for.  Speaking of getting it up, Keitel’s powers grow with every issue.

Of course BBC America has picked up the sequel to UK original Life On Mars, titled Ashes To Ashes.  Why can’t anybody in the US come up with something original?

I’m not sure when the finale is, but I doubt there are more than 3 more episodes left.  I looking forward to demolishing the series like a season of 24.

This pic was pulled from Lostpedia (which is pretty devoted if you haven’t been there yet).   It was there that I learned about the Dharmacakra.

Anybody else see Horace at the Phish shows down in VA this past weekend? Rift was a mess!  Reba was awesome! (smack dab in the middle of all 3 nights)

Sawyer’s ‘77 alias LaFleur brings to mind another sci-fi Creole, Remy Lebeau.  Rumors have been flying since 2006 that actor Josh Halloway has been in talks to play Gambit, but it seems that the next X-Men movie is really an X-Teen movie – an iteration of New Mutants called X-men 2010: First Class.  Yay.

Some Gamespot fan did this in Photoshop.  Pretty cool, non?

My new favorite Marvel casting job is Al Pacino as Doctor Strange.

These two are headed for a showdown.  And yeah, Ben’s a bad guy.  Definitely maybe.  The way that LOST is playing with time these days reminds me of Season 1, when we never knew when the show was going to air new episodes.  You never quite knew the when and where.

We saw the magic box at work last night when Jack found out he needed something, and WHAMMO!, there it was in the next scene.  In scriptwriting, it doesn’t get much more cart before the horse or is that carrot before the horse?  Either way, Skeptic Jack’s starting to get what he wants….could be deadly.

I always get tricked by the previews into watching Life On Mars.  The art direction is so good, but what’s going on with the play?  It’s like everybody’s drinking the grape soda.  A missed opportunity.  Switched back to the Waterston-lite Law & Order.  Blech.

No time for love, President Obama! As if I hadn’t watched enough tv in the last 24 hours, Lost has returned with a vengeance and most alarmingly, pace. And those title inserts were almost shockingly helpful too.  Despite the fact that the survivors tans were sort of yeller, the central arc of time as the major theme of Lost has not yet failed the show.  The preternatural inevitability that afflicts the world of Lost and its characters has become less confusing, and much more compelling.

Fun review from the AV Club: link courtesy of wharpua